Dauphiné Libéré Stage 4: Grabsch grabs wins as Evans tops GC again

Normal service resumes as Evans takes lead, but Contador is at his elbow

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Normal service was resumed in today's 4th stage of the Dauphiné Libéré when current time trial world champion Bert Grabsch took 51:26 to complete the 42.4Km individual time trial and Cadel Evans rolled in seven seconds down to claim 2nd place and reclaim his spot at the top of the general classification.

David Millar came in next to make it first and third for Garmin Slipstream and the Briton also moved up to fifth in the overall. The young Dutchman Terpstra (Milram) completed the stage in 56:53 finishing 5:20 down on Evans. Alberto Contador (Astana) finished fifth on the stage in a time of 52:16 and on sits in second place overall 45sec behind Evans to set things up nicely for tomorrow's stage which finishes with the climb of Mont Venoux.

Alejandro Valverde came 10th today 1:38 back on Grabsch and clearly didn't seem to put off by the what was happening in Paris where UCI President Pat McQuaid confirmed that the Spaniard's ban from riding in Italy could be made world wide once the UCI has seen the evidence supplied to it by CONI, the Italian cycling federation. That evidence is expected to be with the UCI by the end of the week in which case Valverde's season will be coming to a premature end.

Plucked from the obscurity of his London commute back in the mid-Nineties to live in Bath and edit bike mags our man made the jump to the interweb back in 2006 as launch editor of a large cycling website somewhat confusingly named after a piece of navigational equipment. He came up with the idea for road.cc mainly to avoid being told what to do… Oh dear, issues there then. Tony tries to ride his bike every day and if he doesn't he gets grumpy, he likes carbon, but owns steel, and wants titanium. When not on his bike or eating cake Tony spends his time looking for new ways to annoy the road.cc team. He's remarkably good at it.